Some researchers hope Q-balls are the answer:
The reason humans exist is because at some time in the first second of the Universe’s existence, somehow more matter was produced than anti-matter. The asymmetry is so small that only one extra particle of matter was produced every time ten billion particles of anti matter were produced. The problem is that even though this asymmetry is small, current theories of physics cannot explain it. In fact, standard theories say matter and anti matter should have been produced in exactly equal quantities, but the existence of humans, Earth, and everything else in the universe proves there must be more, undiscovered physics.
Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, “Gravitational waves could be key to answering why more matter was left over after Big Bang” at ScienceDaily (December 8, 2021)
That’s a problem. Design usually entails making some decisions that create an apparent imbalance. So what might rule design out?
“A Higgs particle exists when the Higgs field is excited. But the Higgs field can do other things, like form a lump. If you have a field that is very like the Higgs field but it has some sort of charge — not an electric charge, but some sort of charge — then one lump has the charge as one particle. Since charge can’t just disappear, the field has to decide whether to be in particles or lumps. If it is lower energy to be in lumps than particles, then the field will do that. A bunch of lumps coagulating together will make a Q-ball.”
“We argue that very often these blobs of field known as Q-balls stick around for some time. These Q-balls dilute slower than the background soup of radiation as the Universe expands until, eventually, most of the energy in the Universe is in these blobs. In the meantime, slight fluctuations in the density of the soup of radiation start to grow when these blobs dominate. When the Q-balls decay, their decay is so sudden and rapid that the fluctuations in the plasma become violent soundwaves which leads to spectacular ripples in space and time, known as gravitational waves, that could be detected over the next few decades. The beauty of looking for gravitational waves is that the Universe is completely transparent to gravitational waves all the way back to the beginning,” said White.
Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, “Gravitational waves could be key to answering why more matter was left over after Big Bang” at ScienceDaily (December 8, 2021)
“not an electric charge, but some sort of charge”? Okay… At least we are still in the world of hard science here.
One thing: They had better trademark the name Q-ball. If their idea takes off, they will be glad they did. Go Q-balls!
The paper is open access.
Wasn’t Sabine Hossenfelder talking about this recently?: Sabine Hossenfelder asks, why do we think antimatter asymmetry is a problem? Hossenfelder: “[o]nce you insist that the ratio was actually one, you have to come up with a mechanism for how it ended up not being one. And then you can publish papers with all kinds of complicated solutions to the problem which you just created. ” Isn’t she overlooking something?